Through this course even non-technical students can gain basic proficiency in health informatics: the application of computing to healthcare delivery, public health and community-based clinical research. The overall course paradigm is the Institute of Medicine's vision of a "Learning Health System" that uses data from actual patient care to gain new knowledge and feeds that knowledge back as care is delivered to achieve a safer, higher quality and more cost effective health delivery system. Module 1 covers the US healthcare delivery system's unique structural, economic and policy issues and the strategic role for health informatics. It also looks at the federal programs to encourage adoption of electronic record systems. Module 2 gives a high level overview of some key health standards with a particular emphasis on the new Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) standard. Module 3 explores how these technologies are being deployed and some of their current limitations using specific commercial and open source systems as examples. It features an interview with the developers of an innovative, new EHR. Module 4 presents examples of cutting edge research using "big data" and shows how analytic based tools are helping overcome some of the challenges posed in the prior module. It features an interview with developers of a innovative cloud-based service to bring together datasets and analytic tools from diverse sources. Optionally, as the course progresses, students read the instructor’s book, Practitioner's Guide to Health Informatics.

From the lesson

Real World Applications & Challenges

With the increased use of electronic health record and other digital health systems and tools it is increasingly clear that much work remains to be done to make those systems easier and more efficient to use. These systems must also insure the privacy of patients and the security of the data they contain. Finally, they should provide researchers and other secondary users with the highest possible data quality consistent with the practical needs of the providers entering that data. In this module we'll explore all of these issues as they occur in real world systems. We'll interview the developers of one of the most innovative new electronic health record systems to gain some insights into the future directions these systems may take.